My Other Reviews

EDIT 21-JUN-2014: I switched to t-mobile in February of 2013. If you're with Sprint and you're on the fence about T-Mobile, just stop thinking about it and switch already. T-Mobile is night and day better, especially in the Phoenix area, not only that but I reduced my bill to only $114 a month for 5 lines, and unlike Sprint I get unlimited talk/text/data with the standard 1.5GB 4g limit. I've been offered numerous times to upgrade to unlimited 4G for another $15 more than I currently pay, but I've found that I never exceed the 1.5GB anyways, so I don't need it. In any case though:

DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO SPRINT.

---Original review follows---

I've been a Sprint subscriber for 9 to 10 years now. In the beginning, it was good. Although it wasn't the tip top service in the world, it was inexpensive and they always had coupons and the premier program ready to hand out.

Over the last four years, all of this slowly faded away. First, they scaled back the discount from applying to all 5 lines to only 3 lines. Lame, but whatever, was still a good price. Then it went from 3 to 2 lines, and then 2 to 1 line. My corporate discount went from about $150 a month off to $25 a month off over the span of 18 months. What assholes, but that's not all.

You realize that you pay $10 extra for what they call "premium data" for each smartphone you have. Thing is, there's nothing premium about it. Their 3g data is literally slower than every MVNO's 2g speed. I live in the 6th largest city in the US, and they still don't offer 4g. Not only does every other carrier do 4g, but even several MVNO's also do 4g, in fact they've had 4g since only a few months after Sprint called themselves the first 4g network. Not only that, but some carriers even do 3g much faster than what sprint calls their 4g.

Sprint should rename their company to Crawl. They should then change their slogan from "The now network" to "It's perpetually coming soon" because for years they've been saying a major upgrade is only a few months away, and none ever comes. They have a stupid chart on their website that tells which towers are being upgraded soon, have just been upgraded, etc. Thing is, these have to be minor changes, because you never observe sh*t for a difference. Meanwhile their support people tell you how many upgrades are coming soon based on the same data, but they don't know a damn thing.

Also their tech support are morons. I bought my dad a Galaxy Nexus on Amazon, and had him take it to the Sprint store to activate it. They provisioned it wrong, and then told him that the phone was defective and that he's SOL because we got it third party. Pissed off, I de-provisioned it (to clean up their mess) and then told them try it again. Sure enough, it worked, no thanks to those dipsh*ts trying to take it out on us for not buying from them.

Also, their $150 off of a phone upgrade is a scam. When I was in the Army, we had a Jody that went like this: "They say that in the Army, the pay is mighty fine. They give you a hundred dollars, and take back ninety-nine." That of course, was a joke, the Army actually did me a lot of favors. However Sprint missed the sarcasm and applied it to their upgrade policy: they give you $150 and take back $36. Used to be there was no activation fee, then there was one but you could talk your way out of it, now there's no getting out of it at all. Then on top of it, you get a two year commitment with horrible data rates and moron customer service.

Stay away from Sprint and their fscktastic service. You've been warned.

member for 3.3 years, 979 visits, last login: a few hours agoupdated 255 days ago

Above Is Correct - Maybe Even Understated

Thank you for the above. As soon as I get my mess cleared up (only 6 weeks into it now after making the mistake of walking into a 3rd Party Reseller instead of a Sprint Corporate Store) I will publish my tales of woe and disservice going back 15 years. Like you, I stayed because they gave you things and I had a plan from 10 years ago with a couple of Premier Perks that made it worthwhile. No longer.

Anyway - no details until I am made whole again. Have recouped almost $400, but have a ways to go, yet. Thank you for sharing what is absolutely correct.

Two additional points:

1) Do NOT even think about an iPhone (or anything Apple) on the Crawl Network. My Novatel 2200 & iPod Touch was minimum 30% faster than an iPhone 5 on the same 3G Network. A Sprint tech explained why in a technical way - the layman's summary is Apple kludged together something to get their phones on our 3G network, but all comm goes through their servers so yeah, it is dogsh$t slow.

2) If you are a Sprint customer you need to check everything about your bill every month. As you may know, Comcast provisions your cable packages using codes. So when we recently upgraded hidef cable package, we were getting ESPNU in ONLY lo-def and not getting the Travel Channel at all. Technician comes to the house and says, yep, they failed to put in the codes for those two channels, and had it fixed after a 7 minute call to the new South Florida Ops Center.

Sprint runs at least some of their provisioning like this, so if at one time CEO Hesse thanked you for being a Premier customer by giving you a perk, provisioning was done by inputting a code into your billing details. FOLKS - if those codes are ever accidentally wiped out (or expire as several are set to do), then they are never coming back - No Way - No How - Absolutely Not, regardless of what some sweet-talking pig-eyed sack of s*it has promised you when you picked up your new phones.

So AVOID Sprint 3rd Party Resellers more than you would the Swine Flu (just ask when you enter the store). Current customers - take the time to check your bill and question any new and unusual charges (cause the same folks who can't run their web-sites are preparing your billing charges). Hopefully at some point a sharp lawyer will initiate a class action suit against Crawl for deceptive marketing, fraud, failure to deliver, etc. In the meantime...

Go with a real phone company. If data speed is what you need, (God help me I thought I would NEVER say this), go with AT&T 3G/4G (sortof); or for half-ass fast and nicer CSRs, chose Verizon. I have personally verified on 4th gen iPod Touch (with FCC speed check by OOKLA) hooked to wifi pucks 11.5 MB/s down on AT&T and 4.85 MB/s down with Verizon. My daughter's company has just changed after 2 years iPhone use from AT&T to Verizon and she says VZN data speeds suck on her iPhone. Course, YMMV, but the reviews are readily available by utilizing Google. Check Google for mobile data package reviews and CHECK YOUR SPRINT BILL!

Re: Above Is Correct - Maybe Even Understated

Yeah I have to check my sprint bill MONTHLY. Every now and then I get a charge that wasn't supposed to be there. One time a person on one of the phones on my account swapped his phone for a used one, and they stuck an activation fee on it. They explicitly tell you that there's no activation fee for used phones, but they billed it anyways.

There's always SOMETHING wrong with the bill.

Also, speak of their website, they are complete morons. The system you use to check your bill, minutes, etc, is down every night.

My Other Reviews

March 2014 Update- LTE has been launched around me and the areas that i travel locally. Speeds are great. They have also repurposed the nextel spectrum which has helped with coverage in my area and many other areas around the country. They are improving as a whole every month.

December 2011 Update- Still loving my Sprint service. I also have their new 3G / EVDO Airave device so I get full service in my home. Spots of 4G have also popped up around me, but 4G coverage is still to spotty to be reliable.

March 2010 Update- Still very happy with my Sprint service. Data coverage has gotten better I think, although that may have something to do with better equipment coming out over the years. Would love to see 4G service come up this way, but I may be waiting awhile. Sprint has really improved in all areas within the past couple of years as well. Highly recommend!

I have the Sprint Fair and Flexible plan for $30 per month. This includes 500 anytime minutes with unlimited nights and weekends starting at 7 PM. I also get unlimited messaging and data. This package can not be beat! Data speeds are usually around 1 MBit down which is perfectly fine for me as I really only use it as backup or if I am in an area with no Wi-Fi. I am always very cautious with my usage as there have been reports of users getting warning letters about using data on there phone without a Phone as Modem plan...so I will play nice.

I also have the Sprint Airave device which is essentially a mini-cell tower for your home that plugs into your router. Before this device, I had MAYBE 1 bar if I was lucky. I now have FULL service in my home.

The Fair and Flexible plan that I am on is currently discontinued for new customers at the price I am paying, so to say the least, they will have to pry this plan from my cold dead hands!

Customer support has always been great when i have needed to cal them about an issue.

I totally recommend Sprint cell and data services to anyone.

member for 11.2 years, 5610 visits, last login: a few hours agoupdated 363 days ago

My Other Reviews

09/23/13: No longer with Sprint. I moved to another location and the entire data portion of my phone just died. I could make phone calls and text messages but no data whatsoever. It was a good 9 year run Sprint. Moved over to TMo.

03/13/13: LTE... well it is amazing when it works. I got myself a Galaxy Note 2. On LTE I get 20 - 32 Mbps / 9 - 13 Mbps. Some wild variance there but it is way fast... unfortunately, it is limited to some major points inside the city... get off a major road and you are back to painful >1 Mbps / 256 kbps. Yeah 3G speeds are still bad and building penetration is just horrible with my cellphone roaming most of the time inside concrete walls (but full signal once outside), so bad that I have considered switching to TMo or ATT... I'll give one more chance to Sprint to get their glorious LTE network together.

08/28/12: Well, so far WiMAX can be painfully slow... I have seen drops of 1Mbps, luckily, that does not happen often: most of the time it will work at about 3 to 5 Mbps, with some instances where it works at about 8 Mbps. 3G speeds have been in decay for some time now: I used to be able to get about 2 - 3 Mbps, now I can only get about 0.8 to 1.2 Mbps. I am really hoping they roll out that vision network soon (and LTE), I am currently using a S2.

09/29/09: Well still using as backup connection, just in case. I test it just to see how sprint is keeping up... well it is working! 1.4 Mbps to 2 Mbps in good days, about 800 - 600 Kbps / 512 Kb upload average. Latency... well... very high but that is expected from a OTA connection. So it is good for file upload and download, web browsing and email.

Currently I'm using this connection as backup. Of course, the slow connection can be due to the fact that the modem used is a cellphone (a treo 700p) and not an actual broadband card. The maximum speed reached is about 250 - 290 Kbps and about 128 Kbps upload. I'm sure a broadband card can reach about 1 Mbps.

The low price is a bundled solution. Install is basically limited to connect a cable on the phone (USB) and running the application on the phone. So far, a few disconnections, as expected from wireless access. So far, I'm happy with the service.

member for 8.1 years, 2510 visits, last login: a few minutes agoupdated 1.4 years ago

My Other Reviews

Starting out about 6 years ago, We decided to go with a Sprint 3G card for our home internet. We live about 3 miles south of town where Cable and DSL does not service. One WISP was available, but only offering 512K for $80. After seeing that Verizon was going to a tiered data plan for data cards, our only choice was Sprint 3G.

At my location, there are 2 possible Sprint towers: one that is in town (Coal Valley, IL) that's about 4 miles (as the crow flies) with a few lines of trees blocking, and the other (3 miles south of Milan, IL) is about 6 miles as the crow flies line-of-sight that is out in the middle of nowhere. When we first were using the card, we were going off of the tower that was 6 miles away. After about 2 years, things started to slow down, and that tower became virtually unusable - speeds were sub-300k. After finding a good spot to pick up the Coal Valley tower, speeds were just under 1Mbit for a couple years, with the help of a directional antenna.

This past year, Sprint has undergone Network Vision Upgrades in the area, and the tower south of Milan IL was upgraded. Since then I am getting around 2Mbit down with the directional antenna.

Tech Support: a few times during the 6 years, I have had troubles with modems, particularly the Franklin U600. Tech support in the Sprint store is absolute garbage. I was arguing with them every time I walked in. Tech support over the phone was great. They are US Based and very easy to work with.

member for 6.4 years, 569 visits, last login: a few hours agolodged 1.4 years ago

My Other Reviews

Sprint service is ok, it certainly has improved over the years. We switched over from Verizon mainly because of the price and the fact that Sprint offers unlimited data.

LTE isn't rolled out nationwide yet, but its coming. I have connected a few times and the speed is really good. The 3G is very solo typically under 1MB but this is supposed to improve with Sprint's infamous Network Vision.

As long as you are in a suburban/city area, your service will be good. If you are further away from a city area, your service will not be that great.

member for 8.1 years, 2256 visits, last login: a few hours agolodged 1.4 years ago

My Other Reviews

I have a samsung moment. This is not the best phone and I wouldn't suggest it to any one. But web wise this connection is not bad, it reminds me of when we first got broadband at the house witch was around one meg down. I haven't done any speed test sp I ant speak for that. Tech support could be better, I know 3 or so people with this phone and they all have issues, there have been rumors of it being recalled, not sure if its true, all I know is when ever my sister has issues they update or reset the phone and say its fixed, but a few hours later it screws up. I got my plan so cheap because I'm on a family plan. Work great in a pinch for when comcast has a stroke.

1/18/2011

My sister went through 3 moments in 2 weeks and they gave her a Intercept as a replacement, So for so good for her. I had to have my moment replaced due to the GPS not working, The new moment I got the GPS and the Market don't work. So I guess Tomorrow I be going up to the sprint store and Ill be prepared to be their for a while. XD

On a side note. For any one in the south eastern Michigan area. The sprint store on Eureka at I75 is the best store around here. They actually try to fix your problems.

4/13/11

Well.... Where to start. My phone stopped charging correctly. My sisters intercept had all sorts of issues. So we took them in to the Sprint Repair Center yesterday. Took about 15 minutes before they said mine had to be replaced. The tech had to look at my sisters and they said about 45 min. We went down the street to best buy while we waited. Got about about 45 min or so later, I went in to get her phone. " Its going to be another 15 min" OK no problem. Went out to the car and waited about 20 min. Went back in then they were putting it back together. Yeh, they had her's tore apart. Im waiting and waiting. Finlay the tech comes out and tells me my sisters phone would not turn on. He explained that the Cable that goes between the keyboard and the screen broke. So my sister ended up having to get a loaner till tomorrow when our phones should be ready. But Im angry because this would be my 3rd phone and my sisters 5th phone in less than a year.

11/19/11

So far I guess so good. I don't use the internet on my phone much just because its slower and I have a tablet and get free WiFi at work and a few other places. My sister has an LG optimums now and it still has issues. Internet is still slow at least for me, I think its because my phone may not be 3G enabled. My friend has a Motorola Photon and hes phone and internets are pretty fast.

9/17/12

Few month back my contact came do and I go the new LTE Evo. I know that metro Detroit will never see LTE, but it was a huge difference. The internet is usable on my phone and I get most if not all my text messages.

8/4/13

Well I noticed Sprint finally started getting LTE up in our area. Unfortunately I don't get 4G inside my house but out side I get 4G. I got about a year left on my contract. Not sure if Ill stick with Sprint or go to another carrier in a year.

member for 9.6 years, 2375 visits, last login: 1 days agoupdated 1.5 years ago

My Other Reviews

I almost went with Cingular Wireless until the store rep couldn't get it to work in the store... I originally had the phone as a modem plan and used bluetooth to my laptop but Sprint sent me an advertisement that they would give me a wireless card for free and a router for 39.99 so I took it... I ordered the service throught B2B sales with the offer number from the ad. They billed everything to me (no upfront cost) and guaranteed me next day shipping which they held up, i got it the next day at like 11 a.m. They sent me a Novatel Merlin EX720, the Sprint Portable Router and the expresscard adapter for a grand total of about $55. Everything has been good so far and everything functions as advertised and I have no problem with coverage in this area.. So it's all good...

Update 2-10-2012

I have had Sprint service with a bunch of different devices over the years but I have settled on the motorola photon 4g. This phone is the definition of awesome and I really enjoy it more than anything else i've had and would recommend it to anyone. When I went to the Bahamas I bought a BTC Sim card and put it in, switched to gsm only and didn't have to pay the $3 per minute for Sprint roaming. I didn't have to call in or unlock it or anything. Anyhow, because of the aforementioned motorola I have signed a new contract with Sprint after not having one for 3 years on an old Nationwide Plan. The new plans are way better also. Almost unlimited phone mins (1500 shared with unlimited any mobile) and unltd text and data w/ me and the wife for 149.99 with the androids. About $50 cheaper than verizon for the same thing almost... The coverage around here has stayed the same for the past 10 years, but that's not really a bad thing bc it's not too bad. Now in this area in our little roaming pockets we are roaming on Metro PCS which I don't like too much but at least it's included in the plans. In the areas with good service though, the call quality, data quality/speed and overall reliability has gotten way better in the past year or so. Got the 5gb hotspot plan for $30 for internet instead of the usb dongle for $60 that I had. I don't use but about 1 gig a month so it's a good deal for me. Overall it's a good service for the money and in this area the only thing comparable is T-mobile and they are nowhere near as good. I would recommend Sprint to anyone.

Update 11-1-12

Bought the SGS3 but got rid of the hotspot plan because no LTE. Now tethering with my T-Mobile business phone instead. Network vision is not really in effect here yet but a couple of towers in the area have been updated and the difference in 3g speeds are night and day from old setup. Same with voice quality (Way better in certain places). Seems like they are on the right path but this has certainly been a long ride for those of us who have stuck around.

member for 8 years, 1799 visits, last login: a few hours agoupdated 2.3 years ago

I've been using the Sprint mobile broadband (that term is used loosely btw) for over 6 years. I am thankfully grandfathered into a 59.99 unlimited data plan (no longer offered). That is about the ONLY saving grace to this service.

Performance is lack luster at best. Sprint claims 3mb down on 3G networks. Best I've seen is 2mb - keep in mind I'm using a 30db gain directional antenna on my roof so the signal can't get any better (100% strength -67db). If I were to upgrade / change my service / contract (say when they ever get around to releasing 4G LTE to Michigan) kiss unlimited buh bye.

In the mornings the service is adequate speeds are in the 1.5 to 2mb range. Pings so so at 100ms. However as soon as the network becomes busy with voice traffic (e.g. peak calling hours) this service becomes useless. Speeds as slow as .4mb and pings in the 400ms range! If the performance wasn't bad enough the reliability is even worse. Every day is a shot in the dark as to how it'll perform - its a crap shoot literally. To make matters worse the past few months I've been seeing an increasing number of dropped packets on their end (WAN).

Tech Support follows suit and is nothing short of pathetic. You have to endure the first level people who are scripted robots telling you to unplug the data card, reset your router, blah blah blah BS. My last dealings with them I was basically pawned off and told to go to the local Sprint store. Which btw when I got there they just confirmed my hunch that the new modem they sent me was defective (bravo Sprint). Oh yeah you need a new one? Guess what? We can't help you - you need to call the toll free number again.

Dealing with Sprint is like being water boarded - every waking hour you endure pain and suffering waiting for the day you're rescued. I pray for the day some other ISP takes the initiative to expand rural broadband out here. Frontier / Comcast its time to get off your rump - save us!

i have had sprint mobile broadband for 4+ years. the following has happened in several locations i have lived...but this may be the worse.

last wednesday there was an update for the software. then suddenly, my connectivity was severely limited if it existed at all.

after several calls to sprint, they have told me that two towers in my neighborhood are down for upgrading. this process will take 1-6 months. meanwhile existing customers have LOUSY if any connection at all.

the situation is so bad that while talking to one sprint representative over a period of an hour, my sprint cell lost its signal 3 times.

for 3 days, i have had such incredibly limited connectivity.Â just terrible. i am going to have to find another provider. i can not be without internet for 1-6 months....nor should i be expected to pay for this terrible service while they supposedly do the upgrade.

when i lived in another area, i heard similar stories for a year but the connectivity issues rarely got this severe.Â however, there were several times i had to go to a library, by bus, just to log on to the internet.

BOTTOM LINE: while sprint is screwing its current customers in hopes of getting new ones months from now.Â they should have made provision to maintain current service while installing new. extremely bad planning.